‘Yellow Vests’ Demonstrations:
Two fatalities, 552 injured, according to the latest report

Two people have been killed and 552 injured in four days of mobilization of the ‘yellow vests’, according to a new account from the Ministry of the Interior, released on Tuesday night. Among the injured are 95 police officers. These four days of protest have resulted in 582 arrests and 450 detained in police custody, added Beauvau [Interior Ministry] in a statement.

The Minister of the Interior, Christophe Castaner, asked the local prefects of police on Tuesday evening to systematically clear access to all oil depots and other sensitive sites affected by blocking actions by the demonstrators. Since Monday, thirty strategic sites have been unblocked, including fifteen oil sites, […].

What to remember from this fourth day of demonstrations

For the fourth day in a row, the ‘yellow vests’ have been mobilized in France. Here are the important points to remember from today.

• A second fatality. A motorcyclist, injured on Monday in the South East in a collision with a truck that was manœuvring to avoid a roadblock, died on Tuesday. The Minister of the Interior, Christophe Castaner, denounced the “slide into anarchy” of the demonstrations, and deplored the “radicalization” of the movement, particularly on the island of La Réunion [overseas département, Indian Ocean], where a curfew was introduced after another night of violence. In total, the demonstrations have left two dead and some 530 injured, 17 seriously.

• A demonstration Saturday. The unrest could continue over the next few days, with the movement receiving on Tuesday the support of the Fédération force ouvrière des transports [transport workers’ union]. Calls to block Paris on Saturday are beginning to multiply on social media. “The demonstration will not be prohibited, but it cannot be held on the Place de la Concorde as envisaged by the organizers,” warned the Secretary of State assisting the Minister of the Interior, Laurent Nuñez.

“It is a truism to say that we are not a country that is finding its own level with carefully considered reforms and the capacity to maintain a permanent consensus”.
— President Macron

• Macron calls for “dialogue”. Directly challenged by the protesters throughout the demonstrations, the president, on a visit to Belgium, found it “normal” that there were protests, reiterating that the government wanted both “to tax fossil fuels more heavily” and to provide “relief for those of modest means”.

“It’s only in dialogue that we can pull out of this, by means of explanation, in the ability to find both the right timing and practical solutions”, he added. In a speech to the French community in Brussels, the head of state affirmed that [although] France is a country “that rears up because it does not like imposed change”, it nevertheless knows “how to undertake profound transformations when the sense of history is there and the project is larger than [the country itself]”. “It is a truism to say that we are not a country that is finding its own level with carefully considered reforms and the capacity to maintain a permanent consensus”, he added. ⇒ Le Figaro